WI: Lloyd Doggett beats Phil Gramm for U.S. Senate seat in Texas '84, how much would change?

All's Fair: Love, War, and Running for President, Mary Matalin, James Carville, with Peter Knobler, 1994, page 32:

https://books.google.com/books?id=v...t Lloyd Doggett was a Little Leaguer"&f=false

' . . . found one quote where Krueger said that Lloyd Doggett was a Little Leaguer. Bob Krueger was a Texas state senator and had been in Congress and used to be dean of one of the colleges at Duke University, and he'd gone to Oxford and been ambassador to Mexico. He was a big guy. Krueger said, "Texas needs a Big Leaguer in Washington and Lloyd Doggett is a Little Leaguer."

'So we would go into these small towns in Texas and go out to the baseball diamond—there's always a baseball diamond in the small towns of Texas—and hold these press conferences. And Lloyd Doggett would gather the townspeople and their Little League teams together and say, "You know, I am a Little Leaguer. And it's the Little Leaguers of Texas that need a senator, because 'Big League' Bob Krueger and the Big League insurance companies and the Big League banks and the Big League utilities got all the senators in the world." . . . '
Lloyd Doggett came from behind to beat frontrunner Bob Krueger, and then he beat Kent Hance in the run-off for the Democratic nomination. And plus, he had James Carville as his main campaign person.

What if Lloyd Doggett had beat Phil Gramm in the 1984 election for U.S. Senate seat from the state of Texas? How much do you see changing?
 
What if Lloyd Doggett had beat Phil Gramm in the 1984 election for U.S. Senate seat from the state of Texas? How much do you see changing?

An extremely liberal candidate who historically lost by 17 percentage points running in 1984? Needs either a monstrous scandal on Gramm's part or an ASB. Best way to flip the seat is to have Hance win the primary.

If he does win, my bet is Doggett as a one-term wonder, possibly two at most if his 1990 opponent implodes, because then he's running in a red state in a presidential year.
 
An extremely liberal candidate who historically lost by 17 percentage points running in 1984? Needs either a monstrous scandal on Gramm's part or an ASB. Best way to flip the seat is to have Hance win the primary. . .


Or, maybe Doggett runs on and staking his claim, seeing that this recovery works for everyone. By 1984, the economy was recovering but, for starters, manufacturing jobs weren't really coming back.

And yes, I live in Texas and I'm aware that it's a conservative state, to the extent that people think about politics at all.
 
Last edited:
https://books.google.com/books?id=2...EIMTAD#v=onepage&q=Doggett Gramm 1984&f=false

This Dec. 1984 Texas Monthly article is saying Doggett was liberal, ran a terrible race, and hurt Democrats down ticket. Hey, I'm willing to put something up even when it goes against my theme.

And, I embrace the challenge! For example, maybe Doggett realizes he's out of step and starts emphasizing his more middle-of-the-road positions?

(I'm remembering most Texas primaries occur in March with any run-offs in May.

*In 1984, the primary was in early May and the run-off in early June. Still plenty of time before the general election)

--> article is saying that the result in Texas for 1984 was the worse state for Democrats in the entire country, that is was carnage, that "The blood is on Lloyd Doggett's hands," that Texas would henceforth be a two-party state [that lasted maybe through Ann Richards]. That this was the first time the Texas ticket had been headed by a liberal since 1958 [this probably being Senator Ralph Yarborough]

No idea that this 1984 election was so significant. Still embrace the challenge! :)

-----------------

This is also good stuff:

http://archives.texasobserver.org/issue/1983/12/09#page=4
 
Last edited:
And, I embrace the challenge! For example, maybe Doggett realizes he's out of step and starts emphasizing his more middle-of-the-road positions?

That means he can be easily painted as an opportunistic flip-flopper. Plus that article indicates that his campaign had huge structural flaws a different ideology wouldn't be able to equal.
 
. . . Plus that article indicates that his campaign had huge structural flaws a different ideology wouldn't be able to equal.
Which is very surprising with Carville, maybe the guy was still learning! :)

PS Still think there's a way for an economic populist with major liberal policies/tendencies/background to win.

---------

And we haven't even got to the bad stuff yet! And like the guy says in the movie The Martian, Well, by all means, let's get to the bad stuff. . .

There was a fundraiser at a gay nightclub which raised a couple of hundred bucks for the campaign, and Doggett didn't handle it well.
 
Last edited:
Or, maybe Doggett runs on and staking his claim, seeing that this recovery works for everyone. By 1984, the economy was recovering but, for starters, manufacturing jobs weren't really coming back.

Pointing that out worked really well for Mondale against Reagan, didn't it?...
 
No, Mondale didn't run as any sort of economic populist. Mondale ran that he would be a bigger deficit hawk than Reagan.

What I have in mind is more Clinton '92. ;)

It's a lot easier to defeat a party in power after 12 years in power than after four. In 1984, people could still believe that the 1982 recession was Carter's fault rather than Reagan's and that the economy was recovering pretty fast thanks (allegedly) to Reagan's policies. The economic downturn of the early 1990's was less severe than that of the early 1980's but it came after so many years of GOP control of the White House that it hurt the Republicans more. Besides, 1992 hardly looked like a year of economic recovery at all; unemployment was at 7.3 percent in January and 7.4 percent in November. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/data/UNRATE.txt Compare with 1984 when it had been in double digits in the first half of 1983, was 8.0 percent as late as January 1984, and was down to 7.2 percent in November. It is the *direction* the unemployment rate is going, not the absolute numbers, which matters most politically. (In historical terms, unemployment was high in both November 1936 and November 2012, but what mattered was that the jobs situation seemed to be improving.)

Anyway, Doggett lost 58.5-41.4 That is not the kind of narrow defeat where a slight change in campaign tactics or better luck could have made the difference. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Senate_elections,_1984 If you want a more Democratic Senate in 1984, there are more plausible races to make it happen--e.g., KY and NC.
 
All's Fair: Love, War, and Running for President, Mary Matalin, James Carville, with Peter Knobler, 1994, pages 33-34:

https://books.google.com/books?id=v...at Gramm is running around the state"&f=false

. . . I was sitting at my desk one day when somebody said, "I don't know what this is. I got a call from a reporter saying here is a script of a radio ad that Gramm is running around the state. In it a woman's voice says, 'Sometimes in campaigns we have to discuss difficult things, things that we would rather not bring up that say a lot about a candidate. On'—and they gave a date—'there was an all-male nude fund-raiser for Lloyd Doggett in a gay club in San Antonio, featuring Frankie the Banana Queen and Mr. Gay Apollo from New Orleans. Lloyd Doggett did raise $354,' they said. 'Doggett accepted the money. He also opposes capital punishment, prayer in schools, and a balanced budget amendment, and we have to ask ourselves, Is this the kind of man . . . '" [quotation marks corrected]

"What is this, some kind of joke? Who's this guy in San Antonio?"

I called the host of the fund-raiser, Tony Zule, in San Antonio and said, "Look, there is a kind of joke going around here . . . "

"Oh, no, man," he said, "it ain't no joke. [A dancer even] put the tips in his G-string and took off. He was going to try and keep the money but we tackled him because they were campaign contributions."

Of course it got to be a big story. The national press got ahold of it, Reuters called, Der Spiegel called, it was breaking out all over. I said to one reporter, "Look, I mean everybody that knows Doggett knows that he is so straight he probably bathes with his clothes on."

It was about that time I kind of saw everything unravel in front of me.

We were running a liberal Democrat in 1984 in the teeth of the Reagan landslide and we got what could charitably be called soundly defeated. I was forty years old and still a stone-ass loser. . .
Piece of cake. You subtly present Phil Gramm as the straight-laced, goody two-shoes who can barely even talk about real aspects of life. May or may not work, but I think that's the way to play the hand!
 
Last edited:
Piece of cake. You subtly present Phil Gramm as the straight-laced, goody two-shoes who can barely even talk about real aspects of life. May or may not work, but I think that's the way to play the hand!

Oh yeah, that'll do it. Might get a full percentage point of votes upwards, meaning he only loses by 16 points!

This is Sealion level-implausible.
 
. . . https://fred.stlouisfed.org/data/UNRATE.txt Compare with 1984 when it [unemployment] had been in double digits in the first half of 1983, was 8.0 percent as late as January 1984, and was down to 7.2 percent in November. It is the *direction* the unemployment rate is going, not the absolute numbers, which matters most politically. . .
I very much agree that it's the direction unemployment is moving before an election.

And thanks for including the link. I'm trying to become more economically literate, and I also want to help put information out there and make it easier for other people to do the same. :)
 
Oh yeah, that'll do it. Might get a full percentage point of votes upwards, meaning he only loses by 16 points!

This is Sealion level-implausible.
Oh, I agree it's hard. That's the challenge of it!

I want Lloyd talking and promoting middle-class economics from the time he wins the nomination. And going into the general even with Gramm or even ahead. ;)

Why did it take till Clinton in '92 to discover middle class economics as a major campaign issue ? ! ?

----------------------------

WI: auto worker Joel Goddard as folk hero; and why did U.S. auto companies take hit in '78?
https://www.alternatehistory.com/fo...did-u-s-auto-companies-take-hit-in-78.397126/

This is a thread I created from last year. Don't quite understand why the slow erosion of middle class jobs hasn't been a MAJOR societal and political issue. Other than the very fact that it's usually in slow motion, and the fact that it usually doesn't all that directly involve interesting personalities.
 
Last edited:
I want Lloyd talking middle-class economics from the time he wins the nomination. And going into the general even with Gramm or even ahead.

Ok, and he'll talk middle-class economics (read-populism) into a defeat. The fundamentals aren't there save for a major scandal. And good luck getting a conventional liberal lawyer to look like a fire-eating populist.

Why did it take till Clinton in '92 to discover middle class economics as a major campaign issue ? ! ?

You mean, why did it take twelve years for a Democrat to win the presidency?

WI: auto worker Joel Goddard as folk hero; and why did U.S. auto companies take hit in '78?
https://www.alternatehistory.com/fo...did-u-s-auto-companies-take-hit-in-78.397126/

This is a thread I created from last year. Don't quite understand why the slow erosion of middle class jobs hasn't been a major societal and political issue. Other than the very fact that it's usually in slow motion, and the fact that it usually doesn't involve interesting personalities.

So in other words, you want every single politician to go to the left of Bernie Sanders? To do nothing but try and outbid each other with ever-more implausible dream policies? You can't go back to the Golden Age of Manufacturing. It's just not there anymore. And it really wasn't all that pleasant when it was there.

(Goddard simply moved from the prominent Big Three job to a worse-condition, lower-paying factory job. What he experienced was what many more workers were experiencing while he had his nice Ford plant job)
 
RIVALS FOR SENATE MIX IT UP IN TEXAS
New York Times, WAYNE KING, February 3, 1984.

http://www.nytimes.com/1984/02/03/us/rivals-for-senate-mix-it-up-in-texas.html

.
.
Mr. Krueger, he [Doggett] maintained, ''never met a weapons system he didn't like.''

''Whether it was the neutron bomb or MX missiles or plots to assassinate foreign leaders or funneling more tax dollars to those regimes that are violating fundamental human rights, Bob, like this Republican Administration, chose more dollars,'' he said.

In rebuttal, Mr. Krueger, a former United States Ambassador to Mexico and a former faculty member at Duke University, turned to Mr. Doggett and said, ''I would like you to tell me where I ever cast a vote for a plot to assassinate a foreign leader.''

Mr. Doggett riffled through his briefing papers, walked to the lectern and recited: ''Bob, that was a vote in March of 1976. Congress passed by a vote of 250 to 129 an amendment prohibiting the use of any funds in the bill for assassination plots against foreign officials and activities designed to influence foreign elections or political activities during peacetme, and you voted against that amendment.'' He Says Others Voted the Same

Taken aback, Mr. Krueger returned to the lectern and recalled that the amendment ''was called the Harrington Amendment,'' a defeated proposal that would have prohibited military aid to Chile, ''and my vote there was identical to virtually everybody's on the Texas delegation.''
.
.
Look, you can't run on foreign policy, maybe not even during times of war. And although people don't like the ugly details thrown in their face, at the end of the day I think a majority of people do believe in the CIA and "being tough" because they think other countries do it, and it would tie our hands too much not to.

But holy shit! , if Lloyd Doggett had taken this same energy on creating more middle class jobs, I think he could have won.
 
(Goddard simply moved from the prominent Big Three job to a worse-condition, lower-paying factory job. What he experienced was what many more workers were experiencing while he had his nice Ford plant job)
Sounds like a major current in American politics. And arguably, people who had experienced this and/or were worried about this were a big chunk of the Reagan Democrats, and these voters can certainly be contested for! :)
 
Why did it take till Clinton in '92 to discover middle class economics as a major campaign issue ? ! ?

1992 was a recession year (maybe not technically, but unemployment actually peaked that year, not in 1991). Also, people were in a time-for-a-change mood after twelve years of the GOP in the White House.

You seem to think that populism is a magic formula that can win Democrats elections in any state in any year. It isn't. Plenty of populist campaigns have failed. George McGovern was very populist on economic issues in 1972. And even in 1992, by the way, Clinton wasn't *only* an economic populist--note how he made a point of his support for the death penalty and his disagreement with Sister Souljah...

(BTW Al Gore's populist "the people vs. the powerful" campaign of 2000 was not a notable success.)

Also, Doggett *did* try to make the race about economic issues: "He accused Gramm of attempting to cut Social Security and of calling for the eventual elimination of federal education aid." *CQ's Politics in America 1990*, p. 1426. Obviously, it didn't work.

To summarize the situation in Texas in 1984: Gramm had a united Republican party behind him, whereas Doggett had only very narrowly prevailed in both the first round and the runoff and had a bitterly divided party; Gramm had the advantage of Reagan carrying Texas 64-35; and Gramm was far better funded. Not surprisingly, he won by better than seventeen points. I just don't see any way Doggett could have won.
 
Last edited:
. . You seem to think that populism is a magic formula that can win Democrats elections in any state in any year. .
Certainly not. It depends on the particular tactics and on the overall environment, per Gene Sharp and what he says about citizens' civil disobedience movements, or like "floating the flop" in Texas Hold'em poker. :)
 
1992 was a recession year (maybe not technically, but unemployment actually peaked that year, not in 1991).
In addition, the 1991 recession hit white collar jobs harder than a normal recession.

All the same, I think it's amazing that we're living in a timeline where there's a steady erosion of middle class jobs and the policy is basically one of slow drift. There'd be a number of ATL's in which job loss following the '73 oil embargo (the '74-'75 recession) and especially the vaguer 1979 energy crisis (1980 & '82 double-dip recession) led to all kinds of policy and political movements in response, some constructive and some not.
 
Last edited:
I believe Gramm's initial selection for the House was close (he just about won the Democratic primary runoff and barely squeaked into it in the first round). Perhaps if he loses that could stunt his career and lead to a weaker nominee like Ron Paul, who came a distant second to Gramm IOTL.
 
Top